8.2 Contributing to an Existing Chapter

Click on the symbol above to go to the source repository and feel free to poke around in there!

At this point this work is a skeleton that needs to be fleshed out in most places. I have built the basic narrative framework – the basic topics and questions I want to deal with and the order and organization that they all fit into. This takes the form of section and subsection headings along with embedded slideshows, external articles I will begin to embed and comment on.

You can contribute if you can flesh out any of the content – explanatory and exploratory text, your understanding of the basic issues at stake and the main lines of argument available to advocates and critics of any given approach. I have a basic understanding of the logic of the various topics I have outlined here but am willing to discuss anything you think gets to the heart of the matter! In other words the low level organization is subject to revise as the need arises.

If you want to contribute dive in, clone the repository and make some pull requests. Those new to git, never fear, git is a simple and powerful version control system that enables us to easily keep track of changes we make to a collectively built set of documents. Each contributor works on their own “clone” of the original, creating changes locally on their computer and offering them to the project as suggestions. If they are agreed upon as good additions they are included updating the “master” to reflect the new version.

8.2.1 Software Tools

This book is written in Rmarkdown using the RStudio IDE. RStudio is a free and Open Source development environment for doing data science with the R programming language, but also for publishing results. It is a robust and easy to use desktop publishing system that generates both web and print versions of a textbook quickly and efficiently with as much or as little customization desired. Authors write in markdown, an efficient and simple set of conventions for formatting text and Rstudio builds an html and pdf version of the text. The whole thing is hosted at github – source code and everything needed to write and publish for free your own book, or contribute to this one.

Of course there are great books on how to use Rstudio and rmarkdown written using this system and available for free:

  • Bookdown: Authoring Books and Technical Documents in Rmarkdown. This is the main source of documentation to use. It spells out in a step by step way all you need to know about writing, building and publishing using bookdown.

  • Open Tools for Writing Open and Interactive Textbooks: a braoder but also helpful view.

8.2.2 Lower Tech Methods

Everything is written as text files. Edit things as you see fit in your editor of choice. Rstudio is nice if you are worried about how the pieces of the whole project fit together, but is not needed by contributors. You can add content in any text editor then submit a pull request and it will get built in.

Click on the symbol above to go to the source repository. You can contribute directly from your browser. Clone the repository and follow the instructions on how to edit files and submit pull requests on the web.